Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping (15 June 1953-) was Paramount Leader of China from 15 November 2012, succeeding Hu Jintao. Xi Jinping was the first Chinese leader to be born after World War II, and he rose in the ranks of the Communist Party of China from the 1990s until he became Hu Jintao's vice-president and presumed successor in 2008.

Biography
Xi Jinping was born in Beijing, China on 15 June 1953, the son of People's Liberation Army general Xi Zhongxun. He rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces, and he served as Governor of Fujian from 1999 to 2002 and as Governor and Party Secretary of Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007. After Chen Liangyu's dismissal, Xi briefly served as Party Secretary in 2007, and he joined the Politburo Standing Committee and central secretariat in October 2007, spending the next five years as Hu Jintao's presumed successor. He served as Vice President from 2008 to 2013, when he became President, having already succeeded Hu as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China a year earlier.

Xi introduced far-ranging measures to enforce party discipline and to ensure internal unity, launching his signature anti-corruption campaign against several prominent incument and retired officials and causing many of their downfalls. He also tightened restrictions over civil society and ideological discourse by advocating internet censorship. Xi Jinping also called for further market economic reforms, for governing according to the law, and for strengthening legal institutions, emphasizing individual and national aspirations under the slogan "Chinese Dream". Xi championed more aggressive stances on China's claims in the South China Sea, Chinese relations with Japan, and advocacy for free trade and globalization. Xi's political thoughts would be written into the Communist Party's constitution, and he built a cult of personality around himself, including books, cartoons, pop songs, and even dance routines. Xi was characterized as supporting economic liberalism and political conservatism by the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington DC.